Stephan Gary Wozniak, Co-founder of Apple Inc., in an exclusive interview with B&E talks about the notable traits of successful entrepreneurs, and how he rates the late Steve Jobs as an entrepreneur-leader
B&E: How do you define “entrepreneurship”, since you were key to creating Apple as a company, and what prime qualities should an entrepreneur possess?
Steve Wozniak (SW): I don’t have a good definition of entrepreneur. I’d go with the popular opinion. It’s usually a young person but could be an older person who is young at heart. It’s a person who wants to start a company and get going on his or her life toward making a lot of money.
B&E: How critical is passion as a success factor for an entrepreneur to succeed?
SW: Some entrepreneurs are motivated by passion to do a particular thing. Others just want any opportunity to have a business of their own. They all want to, at least partly, escape from working for others on this project. Usually entrepreneurship involves creation and engineering. Bright engineers get ideas and become entrepreneurs to bring them to fruit. Often an engineer or scientist creates some sort of working model in their home or garage first.
B&E: And what do you have to say about young graduates who make a mark in the world of entrepreneurship?
SW: These days many graduate from college with entrepreneurship training and they look for ideas or come up with ideas with little or no understanding of what it will take or if it’s possible. They assume that once they get funding for an idea on paper they can find engineering as a resource anywhere in the world. This is the business graduate. The best is when both disciplines, engineering (science) and business, are in the same person.
B&E: How would you rate the late Steve Jobs as an entrepreneur and what were his top qualities (and weakness, if at all) as an entrepreneur and a leader?
SW: Steve was one of the greatest. He didn’t do the engineering but he understood it better than pure business types. He always recognised the importance of it and hired the greatest engineers. I was his key in the early days but he did not make a mistake. In later times it was clear that he understood the importance of all the departments of a large company and insisted on hiring some of the best people in the world in every one of these departments.
B&E: So you say that for Steve Jobs, being around engineers helped him emerge as a successful CEO-leader?
SW: When Steve was young he had a huge spirit to form a company as a way to bring his great ideas to the world. He thought fast and had ideas about everything and he was very outgoing about it. He was around a lot of engineers and knew when gold had struck, with the Apple II.
B&E: How do you define “entrepreneurship”, since you were key to creating Apple as a company, and what prime qualities should an entrepreneur possess?
Steve Wozniak (SW): I don’t have a good definition of entrepreneur. I’d go with the popular opinion. It’s usually a young person but could be an older person who is young at heart. It’s a person who wants to start a company and get going on his or her life toward making a lot of money.
B&E: How critical is passion as a success factor for an entrepreneur to succeed?
SW: Some entrepreneurs are motivated by passion to do a particular thing. Others just want any opportunity to have a business of their own. They all want to, at least partly, escape from working for others on this project. Usually entrepreneurship involves creation and engineering. Bright engineers get ideas and become entrepreneurs to bring them to fruit. Often an engineer or scientist creates some sort of working model in their home or garage first.
B&E: And what do you have to say about young graduates who make a mark in the world of entrepreneurship?
SW: These days many graduate from college with entrepreneurship training and they look for ideas or come up with ideas with little or no understanding of what it will take or if it’s possible. They assume that once they get funding for an idea on paper they can find engineering as a resource anywhere in the world. This is the business graduate. The best is when both disciplines, engineering (science) and business, are in the same person.
B&E: How would you rate the late Steve Jobs as an entrepreneur and what were his top qualities (and weakness, if at all) as an entrepreneur and a leader?
SW: Steve was one of the greatest. He didn’t do the engineering but he understood it better than pure business types. He always recognised the importance of it and hired the greatest engineers. I was his key in the early days but he did not make a mistake. In later times it was clear that he understood the importance of all the departments of a large company and insisted on hiring some of the best people in the world in every one of these departments.
B&E: So you say that for Steve Jobs, being around engineers helped him emerge as a successful CEO-leader?
SW: When Steve was young he had a huge spirit to form a company as a way to bring his great ideas to the world. He thought fast and had ideas about everything and he was very outgoing about it. He was around a lot of engineers and knew when gold had struck, with the Apple II.
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